Various types of urinary incontinence, which is the involuntary leakage of urine, can cause a degraded quality of life of a patient. Urinary incontinence, such as stress urinary incontinence (SUI), overflow incontinence, etc., can be caused by a variety of conditions including insufficient strength of the pelvic floor muscles, polyuria (excessive urine production), enlarged prostate in men, and so forth. For example, a relatively large percentage of men who have had a radical prostatectomy or who have had a transurethral resection of the prostate (TURP) may experience stress urinary incontinence. As another example, in some patients, disorders that interfere with the nerve function of the bladder can also lead to incontinence.
A variety of known devices have been developed to treat urinary incontinence. Some of these known devices have been designed to mimic at least some functions of a biological urinary sphincter by constricting a urethra of a patient during urinary storage and permitting the urethra to open during voiding. For example, artificial urinary sphincters with inflatable components used to constrict the urethra have been developed. While effective for some patients, some of these known devices can be expensive to produce and/or maintain, difficult to implant and/or operate after being implanted, difficult to calibrate, can have many moving parts that can independently fail, and so forth.
Thus, there is a need for an improved medical device for urinary incontinence treatment.